


unworthy of your love

by Marenke



Series: sea of bitterness [5]
Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Everything Hurts, Gen, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt No Comfort, NaNoWriMo, Sick Character, take your fucking vaccines, this one got more on the friendship side but thats ok platonic relationships are relationships too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-12 23:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21484795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marenke/pseuds/Marenke
Summary: “Do you speak German?” A head shake. “French? English, at least?”Another head shake.
Series: sea of bitterness [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534817
Kudos: 2





	unworthy of your love

**Author's Note:**

> whats UP hello and welcome to this portuguese royal family rpf! we're getting even more niche around here. so this is queen stephanie, and i've chosen to use the portuguese spelling for her husband, peter V's, name. why? bc i'm brazilian and peter is ugly as SHIT. anyway take vaccines.

“Do you speak German?” A head shake. “French? English, at least?”

Another head shake. Maria Beatriz do Carmo was way above her head while trying for the position as the nurse for the queen Estefânia, who had supposedly contracted a deathly disease in her trip to Vendas Novas, but she needed to put food on the table. Or, in her case, she needed to pay for her sister’s schooling. Her father would only start getting paid next month, and the nuns were already on their case about the missing payment. It was either this job or prostitution, and Maria’s Catholicism wouldn’t allow that without some form of self-punishment.

The butler overseeing the interview shook his head, staring at her.

“Then why _you_?” He asked, and with a long breath, Maria smiled, callused hands on her lap. “There’s a girl down the hall who speaks German. There’s a nurse who trained under a royal doctor. Why, of all people, _you_, a poor girl who can’t even speak the same language as our queen?”

That was a question she could answer. Maria had heard every rumor the old ladies had to tell, and she always had a knack for telling truth from a lie.

“I’ve had diphtheria and didn’t die.” She lied, smoothly and practiced; the butler’s eyes went for her neck, which had a small scar on the center, from when she had almost died falling from a tree. If it would trick him, then the better it was. “So if you hire me, I can at least treat her safely, without caring whether I’ll be sick.”

Something she’d do anyway; Maria had nothing to live for, except for paying her little sister’s schooling. If dying without being able to breathe was going to give Madalena a better life, then so be it.

The butler hesitated, and Maria was ready to launch into the over-complicated story she had made up about it, but he asked nothing, rising up instead, a decision already taken.

“Well, better you, then. Not like the queen can talk much…” He sighed, passing a hand through his greying hair, and Maria rose as well, bowing and thanking the man profusely. “Can you start now? You’d have to stay at her side until she…”

He choked up, emotional, and Maria nodded. Until she died, of course. Then, whatever waited for her.

“Yes, just forward my payment to…” A pause, as she decided: to give her money to her father or directly to the nuns? She chose the nuns, unsure if her father would pay the women instead of spending it in alcohol, and told the butler as so, the man rising one eyebrow. “Where is the queen? When do I start?”

“Follow me.” The butler said, and Maria obeyed.

* * *

The queen seemed fine. Maria did not see the fuss they were making over her, watching the pale woman that lay in her bed like… Well, like a queen from a storybook. Her dark hair and eyes did not help matters; it only made her look paler, but not in the sick way a person should look. No, she looked quite sweet.

By her side, the king, the very image of a worried husband, holding her hand and muttering in a language that sounded harsh and yet kind.

The butler cleared his throat, and the king jumped on his skin, caught obviously unaware. Gesturing for Maria to stay put, the older man approached the king and queen, speaking with them in the gentle tones of a different language. The two nodded, and then, speaking in good old Portuguese, the butler told the king he had meetings to attend. With a single glance to his wife, the man left her behind, and Maria had the grace to wait until the door closed behind them to approach the queen, looking at her face.

She was pretty. Pretty, spoiled, and probably never had worked a day on her life. And now that Maria was closer to her, there was a slight sheen of sweat on her face, the smell wafting to her nose.

“I’m Maria.” She gestured to herself, and the queen cocked her head, obviously confused as the girl spoke in the familiar unfamiliar language. She had been queen for a year, she should know Portuguese at this point, right? But probably no, she didn’t; what use was that language in the palace hallways, when everyone bent their backs to royalty and did as asked? “You’re the queen, and I’m here to help.”

“Stephanie.” The queen said, gesturing to herself, and Maria rose an eyebrow. “Call me Stephanie.”

_Stephanie_ differed from _Estefânia_, but she assumed the queen still preferred being called by her original name, instead of the Portuguese version of it. It also showed that she understood Portuguese, even if just a little.

Well, it would do. Maria saw a basin full of water, a sniff telling her it was rose water, and she had to bite back a sneer. Grabbing the washcloth, she dabbed it in the water and started washing the queen’s face, as she glowed under the attention. Maria felt a little jealous; even when she was a kid and her mother was alive, when she was sick, she wasn’t treated like this.

* * *

“My husband…” Started Stephanie, snapping Maria out of her thoughts as she went to grab a cup of water for the queen. Maria looked at her, nodding at her to continue. “Pedro. Where is he?”

The moon hung heavy in the sky, bathing the world in pale shadows that made her look sick. Maria, half-asleep still, didn’t know what to answer.

The rumours on the street would make her say _brothel, your husband is out, trying to get a bastard to place on the throne_, but this was a sick woman, a sick woman who could barely speak Portuguese; what would be kind? Maria didn’t know kindness, unless it came to her sister. What she would’ve told Madalena, were it her on the bed, sick and dying? Except Maria couldn’t pretend this was her sister: Madalena had the same dirty blonde hair, almost brown as Maria, while the queen was black of hair and black of eyes, unlike Maria and Madalena’s shared brown eyes, a color so light it was barely dusty. 

But still. To be kind was a tenant of Catholicism, and Maria went to church every Sunday.

“I don’t know.” A lie by omission and a truth to be told; she really had no idea. 

The queen nodded, shoulders slumping, eyes looking away. She then started to sing a church hymn, vague and somber in Latin, and Maria joined her. Maria’s voice wasn’t good; she hadn’t been trained, but she could at least do the background voice, a companionship to the queen.

If she recalled correctly, Maria remembered, brain wracking itself over the answer as she helped Stephanie drink her water, it was a funeral hymn.

* * *

The king appeared every morning, before breakfast. Maria usually stayed in a corner, not paying attention to the two as she chewed as fast as possible through her cheap bread and drank her fill of coffee, their mumbled voices in what she was coming to recognize as German a background noise easily drowned out.

Stephanie always told her, excited and in broken Portuguese, what the king had relayed to her; news about the outside and gossip about royals she had never even heard about, languages she did not know mixed in. All very boring, but Maria smiled and pretended that she enjoyed it, pretended she understood every word that was spoken.

The queen’s speech did not last past the fifth morning, though. After breakfast, a cough that sounded like barking appeared on her throat, the woman spewing a filthy, grey membrane onto her hands as Maria patted her back, trying to offer her comfort as she noticed that Stephanie’s throat had swollen. How she still drew breath was a mystery; perhaps she was staying alive for her husband’s sake.

There was a confusion when a maid caught the queen coughing her lungs out, but Maria glared at the woman until she stayed quiet, voice coming out between gritted teeth as she told her to tell the doctor to come in.

The maid scurried away, and Maria helped the queen clean up, using the fancy linen of her once pristine white bed to clean the blood away, tears falling from Stephanie’s eyes as she saw the sea of blood she laid upon.

“I’m dying.” This wasn’t a question, nor a doubt, rasped out with great difficulty between rapid breathing: it was an affirmation of a truth everyone knew and refused to speak plainly about.

“Yes.” Maria replied, helping the queen up and away from the bloody sheets, taking her to the comfortable red velvet chair that was available. “Soon, I’d say.”

The queen sobbed, and then started to cough. Maria sat on the armrest and comforted Stephanie, her tears intermingling with the blood that poured out of her, mixed with that grey membrane.

* * *

The doctor came, gave the queen an anesthetic to make her sleep, and Maria held Stephanie’s hand until she had fallen into the deepest of the sleeps. After that, she quietly let go, and went to the bell and whistle system that had been put there, instinctively pulling on the one she guessed would call the butler, ringing it like it was a church bell and it was a beautiful Sunday morning.

When the butler appeared, he seemed displeased, but Maria cared not for it, marching to the man on the doorstep.

“Where is the king?” Maria all but growled - no, she growled, furious at a man that was her ruler, but fuck that; right now, her ruler was the woman who laid down in her bed, closer to death than anyone else, the woman who, effectively, was paying for her sister’s studies - to the butler, who sneered at her. “No, don’t - don’t you _dare_. She’s dying! She wants her husband, and he - he can’t even come here?”

“There’s a risk the king will be infected too, you know of that. I cannot allow…” The butler started, and Maria’s eyes widened, nostrils flaring as she put her hands on her hips.

“Fuck you. Who do you think you are, to decide the king’s affairs for him? Let Stephanie see him, you -” A cough broke Maria’s speech, and she turned in a whirl of cloth, going faster than she expected to the queen’s bedside, as if every step that took too long would see Stephanie dead. Even the anesthesia wasn’t enough to allow her breathing room; things were dire, the queen at the doorstep of God.

The butler stood still at the doorstep, if the illumination that bathed Stephanie’s face was any sign. Maria ignored him, focusing on cleaning the sweat out of the queen’s face, whispering soothing words that meant nothing at all to the asleep woman.

“I’ll speak to the king.” The butler said, but Maria would only understand his words hours later, run and ragged, as the king strolled in, perfect as a painting. “And you should watch your words.”

She would not. Not if it was for Stephanie.

* * *

The king wasn’t present when Stephanie was dying, rasping breath a deathly call. Maria cleaned the sweat and blood out of her face, careful, ever so careful. Maria’s throat was sore, her breath tight on her chest, and she knew that, after the queen was gone, she’d be the next.

Such a shame she’d never see her sister again. At least Maria had done what she could for the little girl. She’d die, in her own bed, alone and unloved, only the river Tagus to give her any semblance of comfort. From dust to dust, from ashes to ashes, everyone fell down - from queen to peasant, this disease affected everyone equally. 

“In another life, we could’ve been friends, Stephanie.” Maria said, with a smile, and the woman - too far gone, eyes delirious - smiled at her.

“We’re married, aren’t we?” She replied, and started mumbling in German, looking around but not seeing anything. Maria smiled and kissed her brow, and Stephanie hummed, content. Her skin tasted like the ocean and felt just as cold. “Comfort my Pedro, please.”

She would not give the man who refused to see his wife in her last hours any sort of comfort. 

“Of course I will.” She lied. The queen’s eyes closed, satisfied with the answer, and Maria did not let go of the woman’s hands as long as they were warm.


End file.
